Long-remembered words

Published 8:54 am, Thursday, December 19, 2013

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Most pastors are delighted if anybody remembers their Sunday message three days later.

After 30 years, people are still quoting Pastor Stuart Briscoe: “The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal. The spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ is supernatural. The spirit of Christmas is a human product; the Spirit of Christ is a divine person. That makes all the difference in the world.”

But what if you preached a sermon a century ago, or wrote down some lines more than 300 years hence, and your words are still being quoted? That’s incredible.

Phillips Brooks has been dead more than a century, but in all corners of the Christian world people still echo this pastor’s Christmas admonition:

Then let every heart keep Christmas within.

Christ’s pity for sorrow,

Christ’s hatred for sin,

Christ’s care for the weakest,

Christ’s courage for right.

Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight!

Even more profound and much longer remembered are the simple lines by the poet John Donne:

Twas much,

that man was

made like God before,

But that God should

be like man

much more.

Donne captured the essence of the Incarnation, but no better, perhaps, than St. Athanasius. More than 1,700 years ago, he summed up what God did for us at Christmas:

He became what we are that

He might make us what he is.

This Christmas I’m glad somebody preserved these words for us to remember.